If you want a career in the healthcare industry, but don’t have aspirations of becoming a nurse or doctor, one of your options is to pursue a degree in public health management. This field is concerned with promoting a healthy lifestyle in order to prolong life and prevent disease. There are degree programs at all levels for public health management workers, but whether you’re interested in a bachelor’s degree or would prefer an advanced degree, it is important to look for an accredited program.
Accreditation is done by a third part and used to ensure that the school you attend really will prepare you for the workforce in your chosen field. This is especially important for online programs, and anyone, regardless of experience or skill, can post classes online and charge a fee to take them. That doesn’t mean that the information you’re learning is correct or up-to-date. In addition, diploma mills and scams can still be a problem. Diploma mills are “colleges” that don’t actually require you to do much work to get your degree, as long as you pay for it, and in the online college world, scammers have been known to take your money and disappear. Accreditation ensures that this won’t happen.
So how do you find out if a public health management degree program is accredited?
The government doesn’t accredit college programs, but they do keep a list of the agencies that do, and of the programs that have been accredited. The best way to look for accredited programs in any field is to check this list. Some scams will post that they are “seeking accreditation” or even lie and say that they are accredited, so don’t believe what you read on a school’s website. Always go directly to the source.
From there, you can simply search through the list of schools that have received accreditation to learn more about their public health management programs. Although accreditation ensures that you’ll get a quality education that prepares you to work in the public health field, it does not rate schools in terms of financial aid availability, alumni networking, professional experience of professors, hands-on student interactions, internship options, campus life (or quality of their online space), library assets, graduation rate, ratio of students who have jobs soon after graduation, and other important characteristics. Accreditation only covers the material you’ll learn in the program.
Beyond ensuring that you aren’t scammed, does accreditation really matter? Well, there are programs out there that aren’t accredited for one reason or another, but that do provide a quality education. However, if you don’t already have a degree in public health, it can be difficult to convince an employer that a school without accreditation prepared you for your job. In addition, you may not qualify for licensing by your state if you job requires it, and it is hard to find financial aid if your program isn’t accredited. In short, when you get your public health management degree, take the time to find an accredited program so you aren’t wasting you time and money on education that won’t get you hired.
Public health is the science of preventing disease and promoting health at the population level. Since the late 1970s, public health degrees (specifically the MPH) have evolved from a second degree for doctors and other medical professionals to a primary degree in its own right, with six core disciplines: behavioral science, biostatistics, environmental science, epidemiology, health education/promotion, and health services administration. These disciplines of public health are taught online by the schools listed below.
© Masters Of Public Health 2012
